Research by Author & Topic

Publications by Robert I. Lerman on Family Structure

The increasing recognition of the importance of marriage for the social and economic well-being of children has led to demonstrations aimed at strengthening and stimulating healthy marriages. The next step is to ensure that factors closely linked with healthy marriages are addressed as well. This paper brings together research findings and policy ideas about the interactions between marriage, employment, and family functioning. It presents a framework and proposes several demonstrations aimed at improving employment and family outcomes for disadvantaged populations. The appendix reviews an extensive body of research on specific linkages between marriage, employment, and family functioning.

This study examines the interplay between job stability, wage rates, and marital instability. We use a Dynamic Selection Control model in which young men make sequential choices about work and family. Our empirical estimates derived from the model account for self-selection, simultaneity, and unobserved heterogeneity. The results capture how job stability affects earnings, how both affect marital status, and how marital status affects earnings and job stability. The study reveals robust evidence that job instability lowers wages and the likelihood of getting and remaining married. At the same time, marriage raises wages and job stability. To project the sequential effects linking job stability, marital status, and earnings, we simulate the impacts of shocks that raise preferences for marriage and that increase education. Feedback effects cause the simulated wage gains from marriage to accumulate over time, indicating that long-run marriage wage premiums exceed conventional short-run estimates.

The decline in marriage and its serious consequences for poverty and inequality are well documented. This paper concentrates on how marriage, cohabitation, single parenthood and the presence of biological parents affect the incomes and material hardships of children. The study uses data from the National Survey of America's Families to examine: 1) recent changes in the marital and household structure of families with children, 2) how levels of income and material hardship vary by family structure, and 3) whether marriage acts to reduce material hardship, even among families with low incomes and among children of less-educated mothers.

This paper examines the effect of marital and family status on the experience of material hardship, using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). Among the key indicators of hardship are the ability to meet essential expenses, housing conditions, neighborhood problems (including crime, schools, public services), and having enough resources to buy adequate amounts of food. The results indicate marriage does lower material hardship, even among households with similar incomes and demographic and educational characteristics. Moreover, the reduced hardship associated with marriage extends both to low-income and to less-educated women, despite their less promising marriage market.

This paper examines the dynamics of marriage and family patterns and their relationship to living standards of a recent cohort of mothers. It is not obvious that married mothers should perform economically better than mothers in cohabiting relationships or single mothers living with at least one other adult. But marriage is likely to raise living standards if it is associated with family and income stability. Using a variety of statistical techniques, the study finds that marriages, even shotgun marriages, significantly raise both the level and stability of living standards experienced by mothers and their children.

This paper brings together a body of empirical evidence on how marriage affects the economic well-being of families with children. The paper considers the theoretical reasons marriage might enhance economic well-being, clarifies the empirical questions about the potential roles of marriage, and presents descriptive data and the evidence from empirical studies. The review deals with the impact of higher marriage propensities on incomes and wealth, of gains in marriage relative to cohabitation, of the stimulus to male earnings associated with marriage, and of the changes in economic well-being associated with entry into marriage, divorce, remarriage, and parenthood.

Marriage reduces poverty, but government programs promoting healthy marriages remain to be tested. The author recommends requiring states to target TANF funds used for marriage promotion programs to low-income individuals; supporting a range of strategies that integrate marriage initiatives into well-established, family-related initiatives; and planning an overall strategy and designing well-defined, targeted projects that assess which approaches best promote stable, healthy marriages.